Dean Fuleihan will return as first deputy mayor and Elle Bisgaard-Church will be chief of staff.
NEW YORK — In picking his top-ranking aides for City Hall, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is balancing a track record in government with experience on his own team.
Mamdani announced Monday that Dean Fuleihan will be his first deputy mayor, returning to the position he held under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. Fuleihan, 74, has worked in New York government for nearly five decades.
For chief of staff, Mamdani picked Elle Bisgaard-Church, a fellow 34-year-old Democratic socialist who has held the same title in his Assembly office and served as his campaign manager during the Democratic primary.
Mamdani called them “two leaders who have deep experience guiding our city and state through challenging moments, possess the fresh, innovative ideas needed to transform our city and the expertise to help me deliver on the campaign promises that resonated with more than 1 million New Yorkers.”
In making appointments, Mamdani has been expected to borrow heavily from the de Blasio administration, given that the progressive mayor’s focus on inequality from 2014 to 2021 presaged Mamdani’s own campaign.
But Mamdani said not to expect a retread.
“I am going to be creating a new City Hall. It is a City Hall that will look to experts in the work of government, experts such as our soon to be first deputy mayor, but it is not a City Hall that looks to any previous administration as a model that we will take on word for word, step for step,” he said.
Mamdani’s press conference was held at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute, which occupies the same Upper East Side mansion where Franklin Delano Roosevelt held his own presidential transition in 1932.
These were the first two official appointments announced by Mamdani, though he’s previously said he hopes that NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch will stay in her role. Mamdani announced the leaders of his transition committee Wednesday, the day after defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the general election.
The announcement also confirmed that City Comptroller Brad Lander will not hold the top post under Mamdani. Lander’s name was floated for an administration job after he and Mamdani endorsed each other in the ranked-choice primary, but he has since turned his attention to a potential challenge against Rep. Dan Goldman in a Democratic primary next year.
Fuleihan expressed optimism about working with Gov. Kathy Hochul, even after she expressed concerns about funding Mamdani’s plans for free buses and universal child care.
“I’ve been told many times in the past things could not happen, and directly. And that’s not what we’re being told. We’re being told, let’s have a conversation, and that’s what we’re going to do,” Fuleihan said.
Asked if he was willing to compromise on free buses for all and expand the existing Fair Fares program for low-income New Yorkers instead, Mamdani held firm. “I’m just as excited as I was about free buses today as I was more than a year ago,” he said.
In the meantime, Mamdani will work on filling out an administration before he’s inaugurated on Jan. 1. While he has said he’ll consider retaining members of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, Bisgaard-Church criticized the outgoing mayor, saying the new administration will work “to turn the page on a politics devoid of ambition and beholden to special interests.”
Fuleihan was widely expected to have a top role in the administration after advising Mamdani ahead of the primary and through the general election.
A longtime Assembly aide under former Speaker Sheldon Silver, Fuleihan served as de Blasio’s budget director for his first term before being promoted to first deputy mayor in 2018.
That Mamdani would pull from the appointees of de Blasio, who New Yorkers widely disapproved of when he left office, earned some criticism from the likes of Renu Mukherjee, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.
“Nothing screams ‘a New Era for NYC’ like appointing Bill de Blasio’s First Deputy Mayor to be your First Deputy Mayor, am I right?” she posted on X.
But it was primarily praise that poured in for both appointments, particularly Fuleihan who Hochul heralded in an X post as “a great choice and a win for New Yorkers.” Rep. Ritchie Torres called it “an exceptional appointment in more ways than one.”
Fuleihan was also complimented by some who have worked with him before, like Eric Phillips, a Democratic consultant who previously served as de Blasio’s press secretary.
“Dean is exactly the person Mr. Mamdani needs. He has an unrivaled command of city and state government and he has the rare blend of heart and head needed to tackle serious problems,” Phillips said in a statement. “Dean’s wise and kind, which few people in politics are.”